The Longest Night
In the early afternoon hours of December 21, 1988, a Pan Am Boeing 727 departed Germany’s Frankfurt Airport for London. The plane landed at Heathrow Airport at roughly 5:40 p.m. following an uneventful flight. Within 20 minutes, connecting passengers and baggage were transferred to Pan Am Flight 103, a regularly scheduled flight to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on the way to its final destination in Detroit, Michigan. By 6:25 p.m., the Boeing 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas was airborne under the command of a senior flight crew with a combined total of over 20,000 flight hours of experience. Air traffic control set a route north into Scottish airspace. Conditions were characteristically misty. By 7 p.m. the aircraft reached its cruising altitude of 31,000 feet with headwinds in excess of 100 miles per hour.
Moments later, at 7:03 p.m., an explosion tore a 13-by-23-inch hole in the side of the plane’s fuselage. Forensic experts would later conclude the blast had taken less than one second, leaving no time for the crew to radio a distress call before the aircraft split in mid-air just behind its nose cone and signature hump, which distinguished the Boeing 747 from other twin-aisle planes. The cockpit separated first, taking with it an engine, part of a wing, and a section of the tail rudder. Wreckage, cargo, and passengers fell to the ground. The small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, with a population of approximately 3,500, lay below. The bombing and crash claimed the lives of 259 individuals on board Flight 103 and 11 residents on the ground. Of those killed, 190 were United States citizens, making this the deadliest terrorist attack on American civilians prior to September 11, 2001. It remains the deadliest attack in the history of the United Kingdom.
The report contains factual information, analysis, and conclusions drawn from the evidence collected at the crash sites and the post mortem examinations performed on victims. Though the report notes the flight recorders did not provide conclusive evidence of an explosion, it does deduce that one occurred based on physical evidence.
The crash of fuselage debris, three of the plane’s four engines, and a wing box filled with 200,000 pounds of aviation fuel at Sherwood Crescent resulted in the destruction of 15 homes and severe damage to 13 others. The resulting crater measured 140 feet long and 40 feet deep. By some eyewitness accounts, the fireball at the time of the crash rose almost 300 feet into the air.
This spiral notebook belonging to Kathy Daniels, wife of Pan Am 103 victim William Alan Daniels, includes contact information for other victims’ families, government officials, and media outlets as well as notes from communications with Pan American World Airlines, Inc. from the night of the disaster and the following day. The note from 11 p.m. on December 21, 1988 reads: “Informed there is no reason to believe Bill was not on the flight; his boarding pass was turned in. It is believed there are no survivors.”
The men’s basketball game between Syracuse University and Western Michigan was played as scheduled on the evening of December 21, 1988. “For those of us whose positions called for a response, all else, including the basketball game, became trivial and was ignored. We devoted all our time and attention to matters directly related to the crash,” Chancellor Melvin Eggers wrote in response to letters of criticism received by the University. This cover of The Post-Standard from the following day features cheerleader Catherine Crossland during a moment of silence at that game. Photographs of Catherine, who was subsequently among the inaugural 1990 cohort of Remembrance Scholars, would come to symbolize for many the devastating effect of the disaster on the Syracuse University community.